Directive Analysis

"Directive." The title itself hints at rules and order, so you might be expecting a poem that's a bit heavy-handed on the form.Not so. In fact, if you just glanced at "Directive," you might not eve...

Who is this guy who's telling us what to do? And should we trust him? Ah, we've come upon quite the conundrum, Shmoopers. Because our speaker is shifty at best. He's rather demanding, and more than...

You've come to a place that isn't really a place, in a time that is no longer an actual time, with a speaker who, while showing you around, is also trying hard to have you lose your bearings. It's...

Our speaker is a bit of a hypnotist. He lulls you along on the journey with some serious musical magic.He's got tons of pairs of alliterative words:wagon/wheels (14)ledges/lines (15)forty/firkins (...

"Directive." Shmoopers, if ever there was a straightforward title, this is it. "Directive," as it happens, is filled with directives, or instructions for the reader. This poem tells uswhere to gowh...

From the first notes of ambiguity to the rolling, unrhymed blank verse to the wistful bittersweetness of his subject, this poem is classic Frost. His language is both plain and nuanced. Plus, we've...

Get your crampons and pickaxe because this poem is going to lead you up many different rocky terrains—not just Panther Mountain—before you reach the summit. But once you've arrived, once you've...

Written on Robert Frost's gravestone (as yet undissolved by weather): "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." Whose poem? Whose mountain? Folks in South Carolina claim the poem's Panther Mountai...

Any bare knees here are made of stone, so this poem is as sexless as it comes.

William Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much With Us" (1)The Holy Grail legend (57) Saint Mark (36, 59)